There are also the heroes who have traveled, explored, and dared in the interests of science, and those who have endured hardship and privation in order to carry civilization to the dark corners of the globe. There are heroes also, often unknown, who risk their lives almost daily to carry on the mechanical processes of modern civilization. Any of these will form the nucleus of stories of thrilling interest to the growing boy and girl. Let the motive for the heroic deed be felt throughout the story. Do not tack it on as a moral; let it permeate the whole narrative. It has been truly said that “To add a moral application to a story is as complete a confession of failure as to append an explanation to a joke.”
The material for hero-tales lies all about us—upon the pages of the newspaper and the magazine, as well as between the covers of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Give the boy and girl stories “clean in the warp and woof”; stories of brave, noble men and women, worthy of emulation, for “with the great, one’s thoughts and manners easily become great.”
The following story of “The Coming of Arthur” from Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them (Newson and Company), by Richard Thomas Wyche, founder of The Story-Tellers’ League, is one of the best examples known to the author of the sort of hero or knight story which all boys love, and which will lead them into the realms of the best and purest literature.
The Coming of Arthur[3]
One dark stormy night a long time ago, in a land beyond the seas, old King Uther lay upon his bed dying. He was weeping and lamenting, not so much because he was leaving this world, as because he had no son or daughter to come after him and rule England. There were two old men who stood near the king, whose names were Bleys and Merlin. When they saw that their king was silent in death, they passed out into the black night and walked down toward the ocean where the great waves came rolling in from the deep.
The night was stormy, and they noticed that the waves grew larger and larger. They counted them—one, two, three, up to the ninth—which seemed to gather half the sea. Suddenly, on the highest crest of this wave, they saw a shining ship in the form of a dragon, and all from stem to stern the deck was covered with shining people. No sooner had they seen the ship than it disappeared. But nevertheless this great wave came rolling in and tumbled at their feet. Strange to say out of this wave there rolled a little naked child, and Merlin picked it up and cried, “The King! The King! An heir for Uther!” Then the long wave swept up the beach, wrapped about the old man and flashed like fire. After which there was a calm, and the stars came out, and the elves and fairies blew their horns from cliff to cliff.
Merlin gave the little child to an old woman to nurse. He was given the name of Arthur, and as the years passed by he grew into a beautiful boy with blue eyes and golden hair. Merlin, who was a very wise old man, became the boy’s teacher.
But let me tell you a story about the boy. One day, as Arthur was walking out all alone in the sunny fields, he came upon a little girl sitting upon a bank of heath, weeping as if her heart would break, and saying: “I hate this fair world and all that’s in it.” She had been beaten for a fault of which she was not guilty. When she looked up there stood the boy, Arthur. Whether he could walk unseen like his old teacher Merlin, who was something of a wizard, she did not know, but there he stood smiling at her. He dried her tears, comforted her heart, and was a child with her. But one day after that when she saw him again he was so dignified and cold she was afraid of him. But again when she saw him his ways were sweet and they played as children together. They were golden hours for her and for him. She said then, “Some day he will be King.”
As Arthur grew into manhood he wanted a sword, as all boys did in those days. One summer day he was in his boat on the lake. All around him spread the shining water, above him bent the sky, soft and blue. He moved to the center of the lake and stopped. It was noon, and he sat thinking. Perhaps he was wondering what he would do when he became a man. Suddenly he heard the water ripple, and near by he saw, rising from the lake a white arm and hand holding a sword. Arthur reached out and took the sword and then the hand disappeared.